Chapter 14
Grant
I’m changing out of my practice gear and into sweatpants and a hoodie for my physical therapy session when I remember Heather’s school meeting.
Our conversation earlier has been in the back of my mind all day, resurfacing over and over again and distracting me while I’m supposed to be giving my full attention to practice.
Fortunately, my reflexes and muscle memory are strong enough that I can still block shots and run drills while my mind is miles away. But the thought of spending the next two hours in PT without knowing how that meeting went is driving me crazy.
As subtly as I can, I pull out my phone and shoot off a quick text.
ME: How did the meeting go?
She doesn’t respond right away, and that’s fine. Not a problem. It’s not like I expect her to be waiting by the phone or to drop everything she’s doing the minute I text her. She’s probably back at work by now anyway. Or driving back to the office, which means she’s busy either way.
When my phone buzzes quietly with her reply a couple of minutes later, I have to remind myself to play it cool and avoid giving the guys any ammunition. Most of them are like brothers to me, but the last thing I want right now is another round of teasing.
Heather: My car broke down. I’m okay, but stranded for the moment.
I have to read the message two more times because my brain keeps stuttering over the words “broke down” and “stranded.”
Nope. Not for long. Not if I can help it.
ME: Where are you, exactly? I’ll come and get you.
HEATHER: No, it’s okay. I’m fine, I promise. A guy just stopped to help.
A guy. As in some random guy?
Fuck that.
The possessive feeling takes over so quickly that I don’t realize that’s what it is at first. The mental image of some stranger walking up to Heather while she’s stranded and vulnerable on the side of the road makes me clench my jaw and slam my stick against my locker with enough force to draw the attention of a few of the guys around me.
“Everything good, Parker?” Noah asks as I grab my bag and push past him.
“It’s fine.”
The lie comes easier than I’d like, but this is the very definition of an extenuating circumstance. I don’t have time to waste with explanations, not when Heather is stuck on the side of the road somewhere.
I just need to stop by the PT room and let Melanie know I’m leaving early, and I use the short walk across the facility to send another text to Heather.
ME: Where are you? I’m coming to get you.
HEATHER: It’s okay. I can get a ride. I didn’t mean to bother you with this.
I hate that she thinks she’s bothering me at all, and I start to type that out—along with how I wish she had called or texted me at the first hint of trouble rather than waiting around on the side of the road for some random-ass stranger to come by.
But my brain is on the verge of short-circuiting, and I can’t seem to make my fingers cooperate. So I delete the long, sugar-coated explanation and replace it with a shorter, simpler version.
ME: Address, please. Drop a pin.
“Parker. There you are.” Melanie’s voice distracts me from staring at my phone screen and waiting for a reply. “You’re almost ten minutes late. I was about to send out a search party.”
I wince. Ten minutes late is a big deal, at least to me. I’d normally have to be in a coma to show up that late to an appointment—let alone cancel completely after the fact.
But that’s exactly what I have to do right now, and I’ll have to set aside some time later to feel bad about it.
“Sorry, but I can’t make it to PT today.” I jerk my thumb toward the parking lot. “There’s been a sort of, uh, emergency. I have to go.”
“What kind of emergency? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Everything is fine—or it will be. I’ll tell you more about it later, I promise.”
She starts to say more, but I’m already out the door and jogging through the parking lot. By the time I get to my truck, my phone has buzzed again with Heather’s location.
She’s fifteen minutes away, assuming I don’t get stuck in traffic. Fifteen minutes that I already know is going to feel like a lifetime.
I drive faster than I normally would—still safe and mostly legal, but pushing past the speed limit in ways I usually don’t. I’m the guy who sets his cruise control at exactly the posted limit and stays in the right lane.
Rules exist for a reason, and I follow them.
But right now, getting to Heather is more important than staying at some arbitrary speed. It’s more important than anything.
I spot her car on the shoulder of the road before I even reach the exit. Her hood is up and her hazard lights are flashing, and I’m cursing myself all over again for not getting here sooner.
She’s standing off to the side, talking to a guy who keeps gesturing at the engine but hasn’t taken his eyes off her in the full minute I’ve been watching.
I pull up behind her car and cut the engine, double-checking that she’s not hurt and the guy isn’t bothering her before turning my attention back to him.
“Everything okay here?” I call out, maybe a little rougher than necessary.
The guy looks over and his brow furrows. “I’m just trying to help this lovely lady with her radiator. Looks like a busted hose. I’ve got a guy I can call and get it fixed pretty cheap.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I take a step closer to Heather. “And I’ll make sure she gets home safely.”
He looks skeptical but is clearly hesitant to challenge me. Instead, he looks past me to Heather. “Are you sure you don’t need anything else, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
I clench my jaw and force myself not to say or do something I’ll regret.
“Thank you so much for stopping.” Heather sounds grateful and a little uncomfortable at the same time. “I appreciate your help.”
He hesitates a moment longer, then nods and starts walking back to his truck. I wait until he’s pulling away—and after he’s taken one last look back at Heather—before I walk over to take a look at her engine.
“That guy was hitting on you.” The words come out as more of a grumble, mostly under my breath, but still loud enough for her to hear.
“What?” She sounds legitimately surprised. “No, he wasn’t. He was just being nice.”
I raise up to look over the top of her hood at her. “Trust me, he was hitting on you.”
“Well, if he was, it’s kind of nice to be noticed like that. I’ve felt practically invisible for so long that I guess I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be seen as a woman.”
My stomach clenches, and I want to tell her that I hope she never has to feel that way again. She isn’t invisible to me.
Just the opposite, in fact. It’s impossible to look at her without seeing the quiet strength and determination in the way she carries herself. Or the way she lights up when she talks about April or the work she does at New Horizons, or even the way she talks about elephants, for Christ’s sake.
She’s a force of nature, just like her daughter. A hurricane. And just like I said before, not all hurricanes are bad and destructive. Some of them are so full of life and energy that they change everything in their path.
“That guy was right about the radiator,” I say, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand. “The hose is shot. This car isn’t going anywhere today.”
I pull out my phone and call for a tow truck. While we wait, I notice that Heather keeps rubbing her arms. I’m wearing a light jacket and have been too focused on making arrangements for her car to pay much attention to the cool afternoon air.
Without thinking, I shrug out of my jacket and drape it around her shoulders.
She immediately pulls it tighter around herself and takes a step closer to me. “Thank you. I didn’t really dress for being stuck on the side of the road.”
The sight of her wearing my jacket stirs that possessive feeling back to life inside me. It’s way too big for her, of course, and makes her look almost comically small, with the arms falling several inches down past her hands.
Still, there’s something that feels right about my jacket keeping her warm. That’s how it should be.
A half hour later, we watch the tow truck carry her car away.
“Let’s get out of here.” I nod toward my truck. “What time do you need to pick up April from school?”
She looks at the time on her phone. “In about twenty minutes. I should just call a cab from here.”
“What? No. I’ll take you to pick her up. We’ll make it just in time.”
I’m glad she doesn’t argue, because there’s no way in hell I’m letting her call a cab when I have absolutely nothing better to do.
I get that she doesn’t want to inconvenience me or whatever, but there’s a limit.
And even the thought of her waiting on the side of this damn road for another second is way beyond that limit for me.
Once we’re both buckled in, she rests her hand on my thigh as I’m putting the truck in gear. It’s meant to be a gesture of gratitude, I’m sure—casual and friendly, nothing more than that.
But the warmth of her palm through my jeans sends a jolt of heat straight up my leg. It’s so intense that I have to concentrate to keep from accidentally jerking away out of pure reflex.
“Thank you,” she says. “For dropping everything to come and get me. I know you weren’t supposed to be finished with practice for at least another hour or two.”
I clear my throat and force myself to focus on the road instead of the lingering warmth of her hand on my leg. “It’s, uh, not a problem.”
She keeps her hand there for another minute before pulling it back to her lap, and I immediately miss the contact.
“So how did the meeting go?” I ask as we merge into traffic. “With April’s teacher?”
Heather sighs, but there isn’t a hint of frustration.
Just pure exhaustion. “It went fine, I guess. April is doing well academically, but she’s still having trouble making friends.
They want to try a few things, like a buddy program, an after-school reading club, and maybe some sessions with the school counselor. ”
“It sounds like they’re at least making an effort and trying to be supportive.”
“They are. They were actually very nice. Very understanding.” She’s quiet for a moment as she stares out the passenger window. “It’s just that I keep wondering if this is my fault somehow. If I’d been able to give her a more stable childhood, maybe she’d be better at making friends now.”
The self-doubt in her voice makes my heart hurt. I want to make things better—want to make everything better for her—but this isn’t one of those problems I can make go away with a phone call and a check.
The best I can do for now is to reassure her. I don’t have all the answers, but I can at least tell her what I know is true.
“Heather, you are an amazing mom.”
“Am I?” She turns to look at me with genuine uncertainty in her eyes. “Sometimes it feels like I’m fumbling through one day after another, hoping I don’t screw things up too badly.”
“Are you kidding me? April is smart, kind, funny, and resilient. She is all of those things because of you. Because of the way you’ve raised her, not in spite of it.”
She looks thoughtful, like she’s going to say something else. Instead, she faces the window and watches the world go by. We drive in comfortable silence for a few minutes before she speaks again.
“I’m sure you remember those scars you saw that night when we were in the sauna together.” She swallows hard and takes a deep breath. “I’m ready to tell you what happened, if you still want to know.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel because I’m pretty sure I know where she’s heading.
Still, I can’t let my anger about whatever happened to her cloud my reaction now.
Just the fact that she trusts me enough to confide in me about something so personal is humbling enough to keep my other feelings in check.
“I only want to know what you’re comfortable telling me,” I say, knowing she needs to get this out on her own terms.
“I was in an abusive relationship with April’s father, Steven.
It started small, with a cruel word here or a hint of jealousy there.
He was always so charming and persuasive.
I never thought when we moved to Montana that he was deliberately trying to cut me off from friends and family, but I know now that it was some textbook abuser shit.
And they all seem to use the same playbook because it works.
By the time it escalated to physical abuse, I felt so isolated and trapped that I didn’t know how to get out. ”
I’ve never met Steven and I probably never will, but I’m dangerously angry with him. No, this is more than anger. This cold, dull ache in my chest is righteous fury, and I would gladly take revenge on Heather’s behalf for every scar that abusive asshole put on her.
But none of this is about me. This is about Heather and April and the monster they were brave and lucky enough to escape.
“How long were you stuck with him?”
“Too long.” She shakes her head. “Even after April was born, I was still lying to myself, still telling myself he would change or that I could fix him, that leaving would somehow be worse for April than staying.”
I reach across the center console and take her hand. If we weren’t already so close to April’s school, I’d pull this truck over right here and now so I could do more.
“What I said before still stands.” I give her hand a gentle squeeze.
My own hand is so much bigger that it completely covers hers and makes her seem that much more delicate and fragile.
That’s not true, though. She might be smaller than I am, but she’s tough, she’s strong, and she’s been through more than her fair share of shitty situations.
Still, that doesn’t mean she can’t use some reassurance.
“You’re an amazing mom. You got yourself and April out of a dangerous, fucked up situation.
You rebuilt your lives from nothing. And not only that, but you still work every day to help other women get out of similar situations.
That’s not failure. That’s strength. That’s overcoming the odds and then reaching back to help the next person in line. ”
“It doesn’t always feel like strength.” Her eyes are bright with unshed tears, but she somehow manages to hold them back while still questioning her own strength. “A lot of days, most days, it feels like I’m barely keeping my head above water.”
“Maybe you’re too close to see it clearly.” I give her hand one more little squeeze before I let go. “But I can see it, and I know April can see it too. You saved both of you.”